Viswanathan K's Thoughts

In A Brief History of Intelligence , Max Bennett asks: “Is language an evolutionary invention or a cultural invention?” He investigates.   In the 1800’s, a scientist named Broca identified a region of the brain (called Broca’s area ) which was necessary to speak. People in whom that area was damaged could not speak anymore.   There was another kind of patient who could speak but the sentences made no sense whatsoever! Analysis identified damage to a part of the brain, and the condition was named Wernicke aphasia after the man who identified it.   Two different areas of the brain for understanding speech and for speaking . And they are wired together. Sounds like we found the reason why humans have speech, but not other species like apes. Unfortunately, that is not the case.   Turns out those 2 areas of the brain evolved in a common ancestor, i.e., even apes have Broca’s area and Wernicke area. So it was not the evolution of these 2 areas in the...

Another popular tourist spot in Hong Kong is the Big Buddha. Constructed only recently (1993), the Buddha sits ensconced on a lotus. Surrounding him are six bronze statues offering flowers, incense etc representing various virtues. It is called the “Offering of the Six Devas”. Getting to the statue involves either a bus ride to Lantau Island or a cable car. We took the cable car – it is faster and more scenic. Plus, the one we took had a glass floor, so we could see the water and greenery below on the trip.   I have now seen a few such massive Buddha statues now – at Wuxi (China), two in Ladakh, and now the Big Buddha. All of them have steps leading up to the statue, though there were few steps in Ladakh. This one has 268 steps. The Po Lin monastery is nearby, quiet and serene.   For a popular tourist destination, the entire place is surprisingly quiet and uncrowded. Nice place to go to for the statue, the view, the quiet. ~~   We didn’t have any clear plans f...

When India’s GDP numbers were announced for the last quarter, the IMF said those numbers didn’t sound very accurate. Nithin Sasikumar wrote this excellent article on the concerns raised. He put two disclaimers right at the beginning. #1 : “Now I should point out that the IMF didn’t call us untrustworthy. They simply said that we can do better at how we calculate GDP.” And #2 , his post is not about the politics of GDP calculations.   Before going into the issues and concerns, he starts by explaining what GDP is, and why it is so important to calculate correctly. Simply put, you take all the economic activities in the country in a year (“sales from IPL tickets in Jaipur, biscuits being sold in Pune, setting up of a new factory in Chennai”) and sum up their values to get the GDP. It gives an idea of the overall state of the economy. It becomes one of the criteria for governments to frame policies, decide what to spend on, how much to increase taxes, and for the RBI to deci...

The next item in Hong Kong was Disneyland – our 14 yo daughter was fast approaching that age beyond which Disneyland would not attract her. Of course, she’d been to other amusement parks like WonderLa in Bangalore and Universal Studios in Singapore, but Disneyland is the bigger brand. Also, we’d been putting off a Disney visit when our daughter was still small, fearing she wouldn’t remember anything and/or be too short for most rides.   The rides at this Disneyland were pretty tame – no roller coasters, for example. Which was a good thing for me, since I am more terrified than thrilled in the rides. Though my daughter would have enjoyed it more if the rides were wilder.   We’d bought the fast-track tickets to go faster through the queues. Unfortunately, those tickets are applicable for specific rides only, not the entire park. The queues being as long as they were (but they are still much better than the US, I am told), we went to whichever rides those tickets entitled u...

Art. I thought its purpose is beauty, aesthetics. Not always, writes Sam Kahn. Once upon a time, it served another purpose: “The presumption is that art must shock—that the violation of taboo is what gives art its charge; and that, actually, shock and the overturning of societal norms is art’s highest purpose.”   Art-as-subversion later turned into art-as-a-call-to-arms: “Somewhere in the 19 th century the notion develops that a work of art can be most effective when it’s ugly , when it deeply mirrors certain social realities and presents them in such a way that the audience is spurred to immediate action.” This became the norm to such an extent that: “Great art was linked to revolutionary politics, or at least to a certain revolutionary spirit, so that every significant work of art was assessed in large part by its ‘influence,’ which really meant its ability to serve as a wrecking ball to various social norms.” So much so that: “Works of art are always hailed as ‘revolutionary,’...

We went to Macau the next day. Like Hong Kong, Macau is a handover (from Portugal) and thus is treated as an SAR (Special Administrative Region) of China. Like Hong Kong, it has its own currency (Macanese pataca)! The Chinese yuan is accepted, but the Hong Kong dollar is preferred. Like Hong Kong (but unlike China proper), Macau too drives on the left. And you need to clear immigration to pass from Hong Kong to Macau and back. China with SAR’s is complicated.   Macau is famous for its casinos. If you thought Macao is the Las Vegas of Asia… well, actually, Macao is a much larger gambling market than Las Vegas – it crossed Las Vegas’ gaming revenue numbers as long back as 2010. That said, a lot of things are indeed copied from Las Vegas, including the name (Cotai Strip where the luxury themed casino resorts are located). The Cotai Strip has Londoner, Parisian and Venetian themed resorts – the collated pics from the Net will help get an idea of what that means: We walked around...